


Strategy

by i_claudia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-31
Updated: 2009-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry snuck a look at Malfoy as they squished their way through the deserted corridors, his sodden Quidditch gear sticking to him in uncomfortable ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strategy

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for corvus_noir and posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/36513.html#cutid1). (31 October 2009)

Harry snuck a look at Malfoy as they squished their way through the deserted corridors, his sodden Quidditch gear sticking to him in uncomfortable ways. Malfoy was looking determinedly forward, his mouth a thin line, the corners just barely turned downward. The line of his shoulders was tense under his green robes. Harry had thought they might be finally getting somewhere in the showers after the game, when Malfoy had slipped into the Gryffindor changing room after the team had left, something hesitantly purposeful behind his gaze, before a first year whose name Harry couldn’t remember had come looking for them and interrupted. Now they were on their way to see McGonagall, and Malfoy was once again unreadable.

“Are we ever going to talk about this?” he ventured finally. Malfoy didn’t look at him.

“I dare say Professor McGonagall will let us know why she wants us as soon as we get to her office, Potter.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Harry said, his voice going sharp despite himself, because really, did Malfoy have to be such a prick _all_ the time?

Malfoy hunched one shoulder. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, we are not going to talk about it, ever,” Malfoy shot back. “There’s nothing to say.”

“Nothing?” Harry demanded. “Nothing to say after two months of dinners-that-aren’t-dates and turning up at my office to demand coffee and coaching Quidditch with me and _running off_ after you sn—”

“Shut up, Potter,” Malfoy commanded, and Harry would have ignored him, pinned him against the wall and _forced_ him to say what was going on, except that Malfoy added, “We’re here,” and pushed open the door to McGonagall’s office. Harry followed him inside, scowling at him in a way he hoped conveyed the exact depths of his hatred for Malfoy right at that very moment.

Malfoy ignored the scowl in favor of shaking hands with Professor McGonagall. Harry trailed behind him and tried not to let McGonagall see that his head was full of vicious, violent thoughts, most of which involved Malfoy being tied up and force-fed Veritaserum.

It wasn’t fair, he thought as Malfoy and McGonagall traded greetings. Malfoy had no right to be so bloody confusing all the time. Harry had thought Malfoy was honestly warming up to him; he thought they’d finished with the awkward, angry half-fights a year before, when they’d gotten spectacularly pissed, had very nearly been arrested by the Muggle police for public indecency, and spent the next week and a half dissolving into poorly-concealed laughter at inopportune moments whenever someone mentioned milk bottles.

“Mr Potter,” McGonagall said, interrupting Harry’s train of thought. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Thanks, Professor,” Harry replied, hoping it looked like he’d been paying attention. From the look Malfoy gave him, he was pretty sure it hadn’t worked. “It’s good to be back.”

He was pretty sure Professor McGonagall saw through him as well, but since she was an infinitely better person than Malfoy, she said nothing. Harry shifted, his wet socks squelching around his toes, and pretended there was something outside the window to watch besides the rain lashing against the glass panes.

“I wanted to discuss the Young Quidditch League you’ve started here,” McGonagall told them. “Of course it’s very popular among the students, but are we quite sure it’s not promoting increased antagonism between the houses? The professors and many of our older students have been working hard at promoting inter-house unity; it would be a shame to lose that for a game.”

_You old liar_ , Harry thought fondly as Malfoy answered her. _You just want to know how it’s going to affect Gryffindor’s chances at the House Cup this year._

Malfoy had launched into an explanation about trust-building exercises and the rules they’d put in place to make sure every player had to work with every other player, and Harry concentrated on nodding once in a while. They’d figured the system out in a spectacular argument just after the League had been created, and although Harry’s sofa had never quite recovered from the hex Malfoy had thrown at it while trying to prove a point, the League had run smoothly ever since.

Harry couldn’t quite remember how their fights had stopped being fights and started being arguments, couldn’t recall for the life of him when he’d stopped making fun of Malfoy because he couldn’t stand the git and started making fun of him because Malfoy turned interesting shades of purple when he realized Harry was teasing him. He’d liked the change though; once he’d realized that Malfoy was just a normal (insane, arrogant) person, the office had become a lot less tense as everyone else stopped waiting for them to get into a fight which would destroy the entire building.

Honestly, Harry thought, they’d been worried over nothing. As if he’d ever throw a curse at Malfoy just because he disliked him... well, okay, as if he’d ever throw a curse at Malfoy just because he disliked him in the middle of the Auror Department.

Well, there had been that one time when Shacklebolt had nearly fired them and had made them track down every single porcelain flying fish that had escaped from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, but that had hardly been a fight, really; they hadn’t even broken any furniture that time.

Malfoy was still talking, his hands moving through the air as he spoke. He hadn’t taken off his leather playing gloves yet, and there was something oddly captivating about the paleness of his fingers, an intimate look about the bones of his knuckles, left exposed where the dark line of the gloves ended. Malfoy’s fingers were long and thin, and the fingerless gloves made them look impossibly, elegantly stretched. Harry could remember how they’d felt when they gripped his shoulders, pulled him in until Malfoy’s chest was warm against his own, until Harry could feel the light puffs of Malfoy’s breath against his cheek. They’d dug into his skin hard, holding him fast while Malfoy kissed him and used some sort of Dark spell to make the bones in his legs go soft and squishy, before Malfoy had stumbled back, given him a horrified look, and run.

Harry cleared his throat and shifted again, trying hard not to think about physically shaking answers out of Malfoy or pinning him down against the nearest available surface in McGonagall’s office. Somehow, somewhere in the last year, he’d woken up to the discovery that Malfoy was _pretty_ , Merlin help him, unfairly pretty, and that he had a wicked sense of humour when he wasn’t being a total git about things, and all Harry’d been able to think about since that night was whether or not Malfoy meant that kiss, if it was a drunken one-off or if maybe Malfoy wanted more. He kept catching himself remembering how Malfoy’s heavy warmth felt pressed against him, wondering about all the pleasant ways he might be able to make Malfoy – proud Malfoy, arrogant Malfoy – beg for mercy.

He tried to distract himself from those unwelcome ( _definitely unwelcome_ , he reminded himself sternly,) thoughts by studying Malfoy’s face, which looked significantly less pale than it did when they walked in, and realized in a rush of insight that Malfoy had been expecting bad news, ridicule, rejection, had been expecting to be dismissed or stripped of his position as coach or any number of equally degrading things.

Harry had thought he’d managed to squash all of Malfoy’s concerns about that sort of prejudice when he’d pulled strings until the _Daily Prophet_ reporter who’d been muckraking about the Malfoys was finally fired, but apparently it hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped. Malfoy should have learned by now that Harry was going to stick up for him, wasn’t going to let people who knew nothing about Malfoy bring him down. Besides, Harry added to himself, someone had to remind Malfoy that the world did not revolve around him, and that the Wizarding world could probably care less about how he spent his time, actually.

McGonagall was still talking to Malfoy, but it looked like she had been sufficiently mollified for them to risk a quick exit. Harry straightened up, struck by an idea, and pulled out the lighter Mr Weasley had pressed into his hand as Harry had left the Ministry in a rush that afternoon to get to Hogwarts, still pulling on his gloves and cursing the gathering rain clouds.

(“Muggle genius!” Mr Weasley had crowed while Harry nodded and smiled desperately and edged closer to the door. “ _Just_ like a wand – go on, click it! You’ll have to tell me how it works, m’boy.”

“Sure,” Harry had told him, wondering how exactly to explain it when he didn’t actually have the foggiest idea how lighters worked. “Later, I promise!”)

Now he cast a wordless spell at it, and it buzzed in his hand, just loud enough to be audible.

“Sorry,” he said apologetically when McGonagall frowned at him in confusion. “It’s a new thing they’re testing with the Aurors. They’re like Muggle pagers; instead of sending a Patronus out to everyone they need, they just send a signal out on this. It’s a lot faster when they need more than one team. I wish we didn’t have to cut this short, but we’ve got to go.”

“Of course, Mr Potter,” McGonagall told him graciously. “I understand. Mr Malfoy has done an admirable job answering my questions; you’re both free to go.”

Harry apologized again and Malfoy bid her a gracious farewell and finally, _finally_ , they were free, striding down the empty halls, their soft footsteps echoing off the stone.

“Alright, Potter,” Malfoy growled, “what’s your problem today? That was complete shite just now about plazers or whatever you were on about, so why don’t you tell me what’s really going on?”

Harry ignored him, kept walking until he found a suitable alcove to shove Malfoy sideways into. Malfoy stumbled, fetching up hard against the wall, and was sputtering indignantly when Harry said, “Just shut up for a minute, will you, because I’ve got something to say.”

“How interesting,” Malfoy drawled, but his eyes were wide, and Harry, one hand resting on Malfoy’s chest, holding him there, could feel his heartbeat speed up. “I’m waiting to see how you’re going to try to explain your way out of this one. Do go on.”

“Stop being such an idiot,” Harry told him. “Okay? Because you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop and kick you all the way to Azkaban and you don’t see that I’m not going to let people be stupid about you. Haven’t you realized yet that I’m going to fight for you if something does happen and the idiots out there want to blame you for whatever is going wrong in their lives?” Malfoy’s eyebrows were furrowed together, and he looked angry, so Harry gave a mental shrug and added, for good measure, “Also, not everyone is out to get you, you bloody drama queen. The world doesn’t revolve around your family, you know.”

Malfoys lips quivered at that. Harry could tell he was about to make some sort of utterly horrible snarky comeback, and Harry didn’t really have a witty riposte prepared, so he leant up and kissed Malfoy instead. 

Ron’d been teaching him chess strategies, and he hadn’t absorbed all that much so far but he’d learned that if you can’t counter an opponent’s move you have to cut them off at the pass instead. So here he was, cutting Malfoy off at the pass, and Merlin, it was amazing, _Malfoy_ was amazing once he’d unfrozen and started kissing back. His hands were moving up past Harry’s shoulders to curl in his hair, and Harry could feel the buckles of Malfoy’s gloves brushing against his year, against the back of his neck, and the sensation made him shiver. Plus, Malfoy was really a brilliant kisser, and Harry was pretty sure if they kept going he was going to forget his own name, probably forget everything except the feeling of Malfoy’s lips against his own, everything but the way Malfoy kissed, like he was laying claim to Harry, fierce and demanding and just this side of angry.

Malfoy pulled back first, and Harry had to concentrate to remember how to breathe, but spared himself a moment of smugness because Malfoy’s eyes had gone all glassy with pleasure, and he kept stealing little glances at Harry’s mouth.

“You can’t run away this time,” Harry said, and it was true, because he still had Malfoy pinned against the wall, one hand clenched in the front of Malfoy’s robes.

Malfoy gave him a haughty look. “Who says I ever ran away?” he asked, defiant, but his mouth had a worried tilt to it. Harry frowned at him.

“We’re going to dinner,” he informed Malfoy. “And you aren’t allowed to pretend it’s not a date, because it is. This is me asking you out on a date.”

“I think you have it backwards,” Malfoy said. “You’re supposed to date before the kissing, usually. Do you take me for a loose woman, Potter?”

“You’re the one who has it backwards,” Harry argued, exasperated. “ _You’re_ the one who started the hanging out and the cups of coffee and the kissing and everything. And if you keep arguing with me we’ll never go to dinner and then I’ll never get to take you home and shag you through the mattress.”

“Oh,” said Malfoy, and Harry could feel his heartbeat speeding up again. “Well, then. You’ve convinced me. But this isn’t a date,” he added severely. “We’re not friends, and I definitely am the center of the universe.”

“Fine,” Harry said, grinning and stepping back to let Malfoy go. “Whatever you say.”

Malfoy followed him out of the alcove, still talking. “Also, what makes you so sure _you’ll_ be shagging _me_ through the mattress? You’d better learn to be more humble, Potter; I’m warning you now that I can be very demanding.”

Harry reached out and snagged Malfoy’s hand with his own, rubbing the pads of his fingers against the soft leather of Malfoy’s gloves. “I knew that already,” he said, and winked before he could start feeling too shocked at himself. “And if that’s all you’re complaining about, I’m sure we can work something out. I’m very flexible.”

“Lead on,” Malfoy told him, sounding strangled, and Harry did so, grinning all the way.


End file.
